Ingrid Bergman

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Image:Bergman Casablanca.jpg Template:Audio (pronounced Template:IPA in Swedish, but usually Template:IPA in English, IPA notation) (August 29, 1915 – August 29, 1982) was a three-time Academy Award-winning Swedish actress.

1 Early career
2 Hollywood career
3 Relationship with Rossellini
4 Return to Hollywood
5 Autobiography
6 Death
7 Legacy
8 Skills
9 Filmography
- 9.1 Television
10 External links

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Early career

Bergman was born on 29 August 1915, in Stockholm, Sweden. When she was still very young, she lost both of her parents and was afterwards raised by relatives. Image:Ingrid Bergman at age 14.jpg Bergman studied at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. Her first film role was a small part in 1935's Munkbrogreven (English title, The Count of the Old Town), although it is believed that she had previously been an extra in the 1932 film Landskamp).

After a dozen films in Sweden and one in Germany (including En kvinnas ansikte which would later be remade as A Woman's Face with Joan Crawford), Bergman was signed by Hollywood producer David O. Selznick to star in the English language remake of her 1936 Swedish language film, Intermezzo (1939). The Intermezzo remake was an enormous success and Bergman was a star, described as "Sweden's illustrious gift to Hollywood".

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Hollywood career

After completing one last film in Sweden and appearing in three moderately successful films in the United States, Bergman joined Humphrey Bogart in the 1943 classic film Casablanca, which remains her most recognizable role.

That same year, she received her first Academy Award nomination: Best Actress in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). The following year she won Best Actress again for Gaslight (1944). She received a third consecutive nomination for Best Actress with her performance as a nun in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). She would receive another Best Actress nomination for Joan of Arc (1948), a film produced by Howard Hughes which Bergman had championed since her arrival in Hollywood. Image:Notorious - ingrid bergman and cary grant.gif Alfred Hitchcock, who directed her in Notorious, Spellbound, and Under Capricorn, was known to be obsessed with her.

Between motion pictures, Bergman also appeared in several stage plays, including a version of the Joan of Arc story.

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Relationship with Rossellini

In 1949, Bergman met Italian director Roberto Rossellini. She fell in love with him while performing in his film Stromboli (1950). Bergman left her husband, Dr. Aron Petter Lindström and their daughter, Pia Lindström, for Rossellini.

They married on 24 May 1950, and had three children, including twin daughters/actresses, Isabella Rossellini and Isotta Rossellini, and, the youngest, a son, Roberto Ingmar Rossellini. The affair caused a scandal; Bergman, who was pregnant at the time of the marriage, was branded as "Hollywood's apostle of degradation" and forced to leave the States. Over the next few years, she appeared in several Italian films for Rossellini, including Giovanna d'Arco al rogo (1954), a remake of Joan of Arc. The Rossellini-Bergman marriage ended in divorce on 7 November 1957.

Back in the United States, anger over her private life continued unabated, with Ed Sullivan at one point infamously polling his TV show audience as to whether she should be forgiven.

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Return to Hollywood

With her starring role in 1956's Anastasia, Bergman made her post-scandal triumphant return to Hollywood and won the Best Actress Oscar for a second time. She would continue to alternate between performances in American and European films for the rest of her career and also made occasional appearances in television dramas such as a 1959 production of The Turn of the Screw for Startime for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress.

Bergman received her third Academy Award (and first for Best Supporting Actress) for her performance in Murder on the Orient Express (1975), but she publicly declared at the Academy Awards telecast that year that the award rightfully belonged to Italian actress Valentina Cortese (Bergman's role was little more than an extended cameo). In 1978, she played in Ingmar Bergman's Höstsonaten (better known by its English title, Autumn Sonata) for which she received her seventh Academy Award nomination and made her final performance on the big screen. It is considered by many to be among her best performances.

Bergman was honored posthumously with her second Emmy Award for Best Actress in 1982 for the television mini-series A Woman Called Golda, about the late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. It was her final acting role. One of her co-stars in this mini-series was Leonard Nimoy.

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Autobiography

In 1983, Bergman went on to publish her autobiography (with the help of Alan Burgess). Titled simply "My Story", through the book she attempted to reach out to her fans and proceeded to tell the tale of her childhood, the various movies she did and did not act in, her dabbles with theatre, her marriages and subsequent divorces, people who stood by her, the umpteen scandals, life as a celebrity and so on. Apart from her narrative, there are due inputs from Alan Burgess, as well.

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Death

Bergman died in 1982 in London, England of complications from breast cancer on her 67th birthday. Her body was cremated in Sweden and her ashes scattered with a part kept to be interred in the Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm.

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Legacy

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Ingrid Bergman has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6759 Hollywood Blvd.

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Skills

Bergman could speak Swedish, German, French, English and Italian fluently, which caused fellow actor John Gielgud to say "She speaks five languages, and can't act in any of them."

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